Manual decoding: New feature!

Feb 27, 2018Posted by: Ibrahim KAMAL

I'm quite excited to share that news with you. So, for the past few years, we've seen - from time to time - users adding something like a million marker to a ScanaStudio workspace. Something like the picture below:

Why would someone do that? If you have ever tried to invent your own custom protocol (or work with a proprietary communication protocol) you'll most probably see why. If not, well, it's quite simple.: To debug you custom protocol, you have to calculate the "meaning" of transmitted data at the very low level of "bits". Just like the old days, grabbing a piece of paper and aligning zeros and ones. In that situation, markers may helps you to separate bits.

I know, I know.. You'll say: there is the protocol decoder script for that, right? Yes, that's right, but, sometimes spending a few hours (or days) writing a script to decode only a few bytes is not worth it. Sometime the protocol is not even final, and is still in very early development stage, so again, investing too much time writing a script does not make sense. In that situation, adding many markers and calculating the bits and bytes on a piece of paper - the old way - is still the best solution. Unless...

The end of the million markers age!

Some time ago, we've decided to tackle this problem. I'm happy to tell you that the very next update of ScanaStudio (V3.0.12) will hopefully have a new annotation feature called "Custom word". A simple drag-n-drop tool that lets you draw a "box" surrounding word, adding the bits (0's and 1's) and the right place, and voila!

From a group of bits, you get a word formatted in big or small Endian, in Hex or decimal.

And best of all, if you save a workspace, you can of course reopen it later to continue from where you've left!

So, soon with ScanaStudio, instead of adding a million markers and banging your head against the wall to convert bits to Hex and Hex to decimal, then back to bits, well, you'll just use ScanaStudio :)

Below is a mock-up of what it could look like:

If you have any comments or ideas, don't hesitate to comment, here, on the forum, twitter or by e-mail!